The lead attendant was a big surly man who led Emilienne and Viviane into the ambulance behind me, telling his partner to watch them both for shock. Unintentionally, this left Henry to his own devices.
Though his sister, his mother, and his grandmother were on the way to the nearest hospital, Henry was happy. He was happy because the whole thing was over and he no longer had the responsibility of trying to make the Sad Man’s warning heard. Because once things turned out, good or bad, there’s nothing you can do about it. It just is. And Henry liked just is. Anything else was too complicated.
Our mother had told him to Stay here. Don’t move. So that was what Henry did. He stayed in the truck. But after a while, Henry realized that though he didn’t see anyone he knew, he did see lots of people he didn’t know, and that made him feel a little sick. Then he saw Trouver. Henry got out of the truck and walked toward the big dog, counting things as he went. Henry counted the flashing lights, the number of people gathered in the street, the umbrellas, the raindrops. He counted because counting always felt good, and it felt bad not being able to see anyone he knew. It also felt bad that Trouver was sitting with another boy, one Henry didn’t know. So Henry stayed focused on counting — counting the number of steps it took to get across the street to Trouver — until someone put a hand on his shoulder.
Henry screamed. The woman with her hand on his shoulder jumped and pulled her hand away.
“I’m sorry!” she gasped. “I just thought — you looked lost.” The woman twirled a strand of her copper-colored hair around one of her fingers. She looked around frantically. “I didn’t mean anything by it!” she insisted.
Wilhelmina rushed over, Penelope right behind her. Wilhelmina spoke to Henry in a soothing voice, all the while motioning for the boy with his belt looped around Trouver’s neck to bring the dog over. Penelope turned to the woman. “What’d you touch him for?” she scolded. “Don’t you think he’s had a rough enough night as it is?”
The woman released her hair from her finger. “Well, I certainly didn’t mean to upset him. I didn’t know he — I just thought I could help.”
“And what made you think you could do that?”
“He looked . . . He needed . . .” she stuttered nonsensically.
When Laura Lovelorn moved to the neighborhood five years ago, she hadn’t known about Viviane Lavender. Hadn’t even remembered meeting her that night at the summer solstice so many years ago. And during her many trips to the bakery for a loaf of the thick-crusted pain au levain or a dinner baguette, she’d never noticed how much Emilienne Lavender’s grandson resembled her husband. Now she was embarrassed by how blind she’d been.
After Beatrix Griffith disappeared, Laura moved away from her beloved eastern Washington — with its hot summers and snowy winters — to live with her husband in Seattle, a town known for its year-round rains. She was quickly welcomed into the neighborhood, due mainly to her themed cocktail parties and sweet disposition. She could always be counted on to buy at least one box of shortbread cookies from the local Girl Scout troop, never left the house without her white gloves, never served her husband a meal of leftover casserole, always did everything she was supposed to do. When Jack didn’t want any children, she told the girls at the hospital where she volunteered that she and Jack needed to take care of his father before they started a family of their own. After John Griffith died, she told them she and Jack wanted to travel the world instead, visit the pyramids in Egypt, walk the boot-shaped coastline of Italy. Then when Jack moved to the separate bedroom on the other side of the house, she stopped telling them anything at all.
It might have been clear to anyone else that Jack was unhappy — that, perhaps, he had never even loved her at all — but Laura refused to see it. She didn’t see the way he avoided the bakery, didn’t see how his eyes squinted shut whenever they passed Pinnacle Lane. She didn’t notice that he rarely spoke to anyone during their infamous parties, that while she served guests from trays of cheese balls and deviled eggs, Jack spent most of the night standing in the corner, smiling blandly while the ice melted in his highball glass. She didn’t see it because when it came to love, she saw what she wanted to see. Laura had always been a good wife. The years she’d been married to Jack Griffith, she’d spent in a love-induced fog, believing that Jack was happy with the life they’d created together and, more significant, that he loved her.
On this summer solstice, Laura Lovelorn returned home late in the evening to find her husband sitting in the dark, an empty bottle clutched in his hands, his breath reeking of bourbon.
“I’m a fool, Laura,” he blubbered. “I lost the love of my life tonight.”
Laura leaned down to stroke her husband’s hair. “What are you talking about, sweetie? I’m right here.” She kissed his forehead.
Jack looked up at her, blinking. “I wasn’t talking about you.”
Laura smiled sweetly. “Who, then?”
“Viviane. Viviane Lavender.”
And as Jack continued to blubber on about a secret life, a life of love and betrayal, the fog finally lifted from Laura’s eyes.
“Oh,” Laura had whispered. “Oh my.”
When he was finished, she walked into the bedroom where she’d slept alone now for so many years. She pulled her suitcase from the closet and packed her belongings, carefully choosing the items she’d take with her and deciding which ones would have to stay until later. She dragged her suitcase out into the hall and told Jack she was leaving him. He only waved at her halfheartedly with his bottle, which told Laura how very wrong she’d been. Jack Griffith had never loved her, not as she thought he had and never as he loved Viviane Lavender.
Laura threw the heavy suitcase into the back of the car and backed out of the driveway. Turning out onto the street, she saw the flashing lights and swarms of people filling the end of Pinnacle Lane. She pulled the car to the side of the road and got out, shielding her eyes from the heavy current of rain pouring from the sky.
She saw Viviane Lavender’s son before she’d even had time to find out what had happened. Looking at him, she could only shake her head. Henry was a mirror image of Jack Griffith in his former years. Yet there was a look behind the boy’s eyes that was much different from anything Laura ever saw in Jack’s. It was as if Henry carried the world, misshapen and imperfect, in his lovely wide pupils.
How could she not have seen it?
Laura grabbed Wilhelmina’s hand in her own. “I just want to help,” she said. Wilhelmina peered over Laura’s shoulder at the crowd. “Help, huh? Well, we might need a bit of that.”
In the bakery Wilhelmina flipped the switch on the coffee pot. She pulled the porcelain cups and saucers from the cupboard, lining them up on the front counter, each cup balanced on its particular plate. The coffee would have to do until she got the oven started. Penelope sent Zeb off for supplies as Wilhelmina began feeding the brick oven with logs of dried eucalyptus, dismissing any ideas for pastries or other desserts. What everybody needed was bread. Hearty, sustainable bread warm from the oven, with thick crusts on the outside and soft on the inside, topped with butter, honey, or hazelnut spread.
When Zeb returned, Wilhelmina pointed him to the hand mill and set him to work grinding the fresh spelt, rye, and red wheat they would use to make pain de campagne. She gave Rowe and Cardigan the job of pounding the dough for the baguettes and showed Laura Lovelorn how to tend the fire.